30 comments:

I think maybe that Doremus was initially slated to come in in 2012, but he is about DU's oldest committed recruit (along with Jacobson) and has had a fairly decent USHL campaign. If he waited a year, he would be a 21 year old freshman and we don't have many of those any longer.

Now, my question has to do with what will happen with the d-men. Obviously we lost a couple from the beginning of the year and are short for now. Does Van Voorhis come next year (like he initially was) or does Didier come in a year early? We most obviously will not go into next season with only 6 defensemen and one (Wade Bennett) who is a hybrid dman/forward. Chris Heisenberg has Van Voorhis back as an '11 and there are few NTDP players who don't go immediately to NCAA or MJ, with only a handful here and there who go to the USHL for a year.

What happend to Allen? He put up great #s last year. Any thoughts on getting Jones. Is there anyone on the radar? I remember mention of a high end recruit who was waiting for Gwoz to extend before he signed....who was that? I know Lucia's kid was considering DU any others that have mentioned interest?

Are there any good forwards on our radar or who have expressed interest in DU? Can we offload guys like Allen if they are not performing? I dont think next years crop has any scoring punch except on the blue line.

I've never seen DU "off-load" anyone and I seriously doubt Gwoz would ever consider it unless there were character issues that arose.

I agree on the apparent lack of scoring punch at forward coming in next year. Although, there's almost a diamond in the rough (or two) that emerge. Also, I'm a firm believer in molding teams around a combination of 4 year guys that contribute mostly off the scoresheet and 2 year studs like Zucks that put up high numbers.

Although not numerically impressive, we might have some very important 4 year guys coming in next year.

Allen was traded by Fargo to Chicago after playing in 14 games. He has only played in 25 games for the Steel, which is by far the worst team in the USHL with 9 wins in 58 games. Why the lack of playing time???? Obviously not for a playoff run.

As far as the rest of our recruiting for this season goes, I think we still need to grab another forward, maybe a defenseman (I think Wade Bennett will stick as our 8th defenseman) and then a 3rd goalie will walk on or get "recruited"/walk on in August. Look at our last few 3rd stringers, Eddie Guinn and Josh Rosenholtz were just strait walk ons, as was Danny King (but he was a Hobey hopeful thanks to DG). The best 3rd we've had was the Norwegian Nightmare who was actually a 2 at one point.

They don't have to have 3 goalies, do they? If they went with 2 - in college are they allowed to re-dress a skater into goalie pads if nessecary (and that guy would have to remain in goalie pads for the remainder of the contest). That almost happened one year with the Dallas Stars. I think the story went something like - Belfore got hurt during a game, I think it was Manny Fernandez who got then put in net - then he took a bad puck and was borderline to go back in. Right before intermission they sent Craig Ludwig to the locker room to change into goalie pads - but Fernandez was able to come back & finish the game. Strange. Ludwig sometimes practiced as a goalie - )and so did Announcer Daryl Reaugh too!) Didn't know if that could ever happen in NCAA

As far as I know, he's the only non-goalie to ever put the pads and waffle on.

DU will have an actual goalie as their 3rd, no doubt. Usually it's from a tryout of former high school/prep school and/or juniors goalies who enrolled at DU as the Pios have open tryouts yearly. The best contributor to come out of the tryouts was Bjorn Engstrom, who was a pretty solid forward in the late 90s into 2001 or so.

The 3rd goalie is a neat opportunity for a kid, if he's the right fit and clearly understands the situation. Upuget to be around some top notch coaching & players, be with some great personalities and be in the middle of some great games. Would be awesome for someone wanting to build thier goalie skills to play recreationally on a senior league or something like that.Plus, we've got an "in" now at Vaughn - let's get Berkie back here with some demo gear and discounts!!!

I was at a Friday Luncheon years back and Gwoz was asked about how they found Engstrom. He stated how they had only seen some tape on Engstrom and that they told him he could tryout like anyone else if he enrolled. Gwoz went on to say that they had no idea what to expect and were quite pleasantly surprised. So, I was under the impression that Engstrom initiated contact with DU.

However, you just might know better than I, since Gwoz-talk can sometimes not necessarily represent what might or might not have occurred. :-)